Nearly 50 leaders of America’s defence and foreign policy establishment are calling on political and business leaders to “think past tomorrow” and lead the fight on climate change.

In a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal the experts – 48 former secretaries of state and defense, national security advisers, diplomats and members of Congress from both parties – say it is time for America to claim global leadership on climate change.

The appeal is intended to apply pressure to Republicans in Congress who are trying to defeat Barack Obama’s plan to cut carbon pollution at home and seeking to limit US involvement in negotiations to reach a global deal on fighting climate change in Paris in December.

The letter, endorsed by Madeline Albright, secretary of state under Bill Clinton; Chuck Hagel, secretary of defense under Obama; George Shultz, secretary of state under Ronald Reagan; James Woolsey, CIA director under Clinton; and other prominent retired officials, declares that climate change is indeed a security threat.

“America’s elected leaders and private sector must think past tomorrow to focus on this growing problem, and take action at home and abroad,” the ad says.

“This issue is critically important to the world’s most experienced security planners. The impacts are real, and the costs of inaction are unacceptable.”

The ad hits back against Republicans who are trying to block a global climate deal, arguing that Obama should have to submit any agreement for approval to Congress – where it would almost certainly be defeated.In the run-up to the Paris climate conference, the Obama administration has rolled out almost daily pronouncements and events – many involving business leaders – to try to build the case that a climate change deal would be good for the economy and the country.

Many of the 48 had made previous such appeals.

The security establishment has long recognised the threat posed by climate change. In 2006 a report by the influential Center for Naval Analysis defined climate change as a “threat multiplier”, adding fuel to conflicts.

The current thinking however sees climate change as a danger on its own – drought, sea-level rise, food shortages, provoking migration and armed conflicts.

“Climate change is certainly going to destabilise situations,” General Ron Keys, retired leader of the air force command, told a seminar at the Wilson Centre think-tank on Wednesday. “There are some countries out there that are just hanging on by their fingernails.”

Generals also fear a rise in deployments dealing with natural disasters – which would play a strain on resources and could potentially leave the US exposed.

“The real problem is what do we do if we are involved in a Fukushima or a hurricane Sandy times three and somebody like Isis decides to make a big push,” Keys said. “If I were a bad guy I’d wait until the US was involved in a big situation and then I would make my move.”

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If you need any more proof on how idiotic we have become, you have it here: The argument posted that climate change needs the support of a link to “there coming to get us” paranoia.

Climate change is a threat unto itself.

Generals also fear a rise in deployments dealing with natural disasters – which would play a strain on resources and could potentially leave the US exposed.

“The real problem is what do we do if we are involved in a Fukushima or a hurricane Sandy times three and somebody like Isis decides to make a big push,” Keys said. “If I were a bad guy I’d wait until the US was involved in a big situation and then I would make my move.”

Jobless claims are pointing to very tight conditions on the unemployment side of the labor market with initial claims coming in at a lower-than-expected 259,000 in the October 17 week, just up from the prior week's near 42-year low of 256,000.

The 4-week average is at a new 42-year low, down 2,000 to 263,250. The October 17 week was also the sample week for October employment report and a comparison with the sample week of the September employment report shows improvement, down 5,000 with the 4-week average down a more tangible 9,250.

Continuing claims, where reporting lags by a week, are very healthy, up 6,000 to 2.170 million but with the 4-week average down 18,000 to 2.185 million. The unemployment rate for insured workers remains very low at 1.6 percent.

As a share of the ever-increasing labor market, current levels of jobless claims may very well be at record lows. There are no special factors in today's report, one that points to a continued improvement for, if not hiring and payroll growth, at least for the unemployment rate.

No Rufus he doesn't deny evolution. He could learn a thing or two at the feet of Uncle Bob in Uncle Bob's Bible class.

As could you. As could Deuce, most certainly.

Deuce wouldn't be blabbing on and scratching his head about the slaughter of the innocents.....

(I still can't get over that one)

So......Deuce has bitten the climate change lure......

Let's see.....both Rufus and Quirk have said how silly this is.......Quirk has stated there is no enough data, that we don't even have the formula to analyze the data if we had the data, if we had data that wasn't monkeyed with...

Rufus has called the whole thing the "weather".

I'm with Rufus and Quirk on this one.

And, I'd add, if true, we might be saving ourselves from the overdue ice age.

Deuce, when are you coming after my guns ?

You have embraced every other crack pot scheme on the horizon since your "change"........you have become a walking sputtering liberal meme...............it's truly disheartening to see.....

The security establishment has long recognised the threat posed by climate change. In 2006 a report by the influential Center for Naval Analysis defined climate change as a “threat multiplier”, adding fuel to conflicts.

The current thinking however sees climate change as a danger on its own – drought, sea-level rise, food shortages, provoking migration and armed conflicts.

The cows don't give milk, the women miss their periods, the owls fly in the morning, the newspaper is not delivered, people kill one another in the inner city................all because of climate change which isn't happening according to the most recent thermometer readings....

When the Deuce Man starts riding a bike, I will begin to take him seriously.

I think you should agree with that,Tattoo Man.

My Niece rides a bike.

You do not, Tattoo Man.

She, I can hear it in her lovely voice, is thinking now of marrying to a Hindu guy, Ph.D, who works out of Poland.

I have a veto, which I will not exercise.

She has asked me to walk her down the aisle in such an event.

I have been doing some real reading on Hindu marriage ceremonies and Hindu understanding of marriage.

The Hindus know how to celebrate, the women love jewelry, it is bid deal, done right. a big bang of a celebration !!

The Hindus, like the Jews, like anyone sane, celebrate life.

The moslems on the other hand say 'we love death more than you do life'.

I like the Hindu, Jewish, American way myself, punky.

I will now tell you something you do no know, punky.

Out here in the "West" we have had this idea that marriage is 'until death do us part'.

Nowadays it has been watered down considerably and is in fact until death do us part, or until something better comes along.

In the nigger areas of our hopeless big cities, not even that applies, and the only sign of hope is to know who daddy is....

All brought to you by the Democrats....who have controlled the big cities forever....

An exception out West here is the Morman Way, where we hear talk of 'Celestial Marriage' and such. In this view, marriage is forever and forever. I am not sure this is the best, having been married for 35 years and knowing something about the topic....

In Hinduism a marriage is considered as a part of a long long path, you may have been married to the same person before, you may be again, it is all a part of growth towards CitSatAnanda, the spirit follows its way, eventually you may find someone more to your level......and it is all a learning experience on the Path Upwards Ever Upwards.

You would not get any of the meaning of this, Ashlikins, being an illiterate...

If she wishes me to walk her down the aisle in India I will do so.

She is a world class person.

Speaking with my Niece, there is never an issue of 'faith', 'belief', no Kierkgaardian Leaps of Faith, no southern USA preaching come to Jesus.....

Death is as normal as breathing, it is life's way to something always more....

Assume case 1. There is climate change and there is something that can be done to mitigate it. That requires action to do so and if the effort pays off and the process is slowed or reversed, there are positive benefits. WE WIN

Assume case 2. There is nothing that can be done and all efforts are meaningless. If that is true then it also means that whatever is expended to fight climate change would have been lost anyway, so there is nothing lost as all would have been lost in any case. WE LOSE

Assume case 3. Something could be done, but we do nothing and we lose the battle because we never fought it. WE LOSE

I look at it the same way I look at an 89 year old man complaining about all the money he spent on doctors, insurance and a healthy life style.

The same people that think we should spend ourselves into oblivion on defense because of something that may never happen argue that we should spend nothing on reducing carbon emissions when all serious science says there is a problem.

I could take you on a short drive and show you exactly where the rocky pine forests give way to the rolling loess fields of the Palouse.

Almost to the foot.

Spokane, Washington was under ice. All of Canada was under ice. We are overdue, from the geological record, for another coming of the ice.

Deuce has taken up again another liberal meme, and wants to fight 'climate change'.

Not only has he no clue about which he speaks.....Quirk is right, the 'science' is so unsettled, we don't even have the math or the formulas to begin to tackle it....but Deuce will be damned if he is going to give up that Limo.....

When Deuce produces a picture of himself driving a small gas friendly car I will begin to give his views some real consideration....

Islamic State attacks dramatically increase after over a year of US airstrikes

October 23, 2015 2:19 am By Robert Spencer 7 Comments

Nothing to be concerned about. Obama says that we’re on the way to degrading and destroying the Islamic State, and he wouldn’t lie to us, now, would he?

Islamic State33

“ISIS attacks are dramatically increasing over a year into the US-led campaign against the group,” by Alex Lockie, Business Insider, October 22, 2015:

IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre issued a report on October 22nd stating that ISIS attacks rose in the 3rd quarter of 2015 compared to the previous three-month period, both in terms of the number of non-militant casualties and the frequency of attacks.

Jane’s reported 1,086 separate attacks between July 1 and September 30 of this year, or a daily average of 11.8 daily. That’s up from 8.3 last quarter, representing an increase of 42%.

The attacks killed 2,978 non-militants, a 65% increase from the previous quarter.

Jane’s concludes that the true number of attacks was likely “far higher,” as the agency relies on open-source intelligence and only reports what can be confirmed definitively by governments, or attacks claimed by the ISIS militants themselves.

The uptick is significant in showing that though ISIS failed to gain a significant amount of territory during that time period, they remained capable of inflicting damage to targets around in the Middle East and Africa even in areas outside of their control.

“We’re probably more in a consolidation phase currently where the group is stabilizing gains its made and protecting those gains,” Matthew Henman, head of IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center, told NBC News.

Of the attacks outside of ISIS’s are of control, Nigeria was a main target, likely because of the presence of ISIS affiliate Boko Haram. Though the total number of attacks outside of the group’s “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq dropped, the casualties per strike rose considerably.

“This underlines the nature of the group’s insurgency in Nigeria and several bordering countries, with its operations characterized by mass-casualty operations targeting the civilian population,” the report noted, according to NBC.

Though the data set reported ends on the same day that Russia began its bombing campaign in Syria, the findings support claims that international efforts to roll back ISIS have fallen flat. Despite constant hammering from a US-led coalition, ISIS is still capable of carrying out constant attacks across a wide geographic area.

“They’re able to make daily life fraught and dangerous and insecure,” Henman added.

But ISIS still focuses on their home turf. The 902 ISIS attack in Iraq and Syria, which resulted in 1,780 non-militant fatalities, represent 83% percent of all ISIS attacks recorded over the period.

While ISIS attacks and operations are still centered Iraq and Syria, this report shows that the organization has so far successfully weathered the multi-national military effort to stop them and have even branched out to become a consistent global threat.

Members of a Syrian armed group hold positions in the front line against the Islamic State outside Ain Issa, in the countryside of Raqqa province. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

AIN ISSA, Syria — In this abandoned desert town on the front line of the war against the Islamic State in Raqqa, local fighters are fired up by announcements in Washington that the militants’ self-proclaimed capital is to be the next focus of the war.

But there is still no sign of the help the United States has delivered ostensibly for the use of the Arab groups fighting the Islamic State, nor is there any indication it will imminently arrive, calling into question whether there can be an offensive to capture Raqqa anytime soon.

Fifty tons of ammunition air­dropped by the U.S. military last week and intended for Arab groups has instead been claimed by the overall command of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which is fighting alongside Arab units but overwhelmingly dominates their uneasy alliance, according to Kurdish and Arab commanders.

[New U.S. plan to counter the Islamic State will arm groups focused on Raqqa]

The question of whether Arab or Kurdish fighters get the weapons is crucial, in part because of Turkish sensitivities surrounding the United States’ burgeoning relationship with the Syrian Kurds. Turkey accuses the YPG of affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, designated a terrorist organization by Ankara and Washington, and has already lodged a complaint with the U.S. Embassy in Ankara that the YPG received the weapons intended for Arabs.

Just as significant, however, is the recognition that Kurds are unlikely to be able — or perhaps even willing — to fight for the Sunni Arab lands controlled by the Islamic State, including Raqqa, the jewel in the crown of the militants’ self-styled caliphate and a city the Kurds do not aspire to govern................

The first U.S. soldier killed in Iraq since 2011. The captives were facing “mass execution.” Why mount these dangerous half-measure operations at all, instead of taking genuine action to destroy the Islamic State, as Obama promised to do?

080219-N-1132M-025

“First American soldier killed in Iraq since official end of combat in 2011,” by Mustafa Salim, Missy Ryan and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Washington Post, October 22, 2015:

BAGHDAD —Elite American and Kurdish forces raided an Islamic State prison in northern Iraq on Thursday, freeing about 70 captives facing “mass execution” and leaving one U.S. commando dead, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

The raid marked the first time a member of the U.S. military had been killed in a combat situation in Iraq since the United States launched its campaign against the Islamic State last year.

U.S. Special Forces have staged several raids on Islamic State compounds in northern Syria, but Thursday’s predawn raid was the first of its kind against the jihadist group in northern Iraq.

The operation by the Army’s Delta Force also highlighted the U.S. military’s close cooperation with Kurdish rather than Iraqi federal forces, a move likely to anger the central government in Baghdad. In the past, Iraqi leaders have sparred with Kurds over growing Kurdish power, oil revenue sharing and political independence in their northern enclave.

In a statement, Cook said that U.S. helicopters flew the Kurdish forces to the town of Hawija, well south of Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region. The hostages freed included more than 20 members of Iraqi security forces, Cook said. Five Islamic State militants were captured and at least 10 were killed.

The Kurdish Regional Government said that none of the 69 freed captives were Kurdish, contradicting earlier claims by other Kurdish officials. The Pentagon placed the number of freed prisoners at 70.

One U.S. service member died from wounds suffered when Islamic State forces opened fire on the Kurdish and American forces, Cook said. Four peshmerga were wounded….

Eighty-one percent of Republican insiders say that the likelihood that Trump becomes their party’s nominee is higher today than it was a month ago.

By Katie Glueck

10/23/15 05:12 AM EDTTPC_1023_Trump_POLGetty.jpg

The odds that Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential nomination are going up.

Eighty-one percent of Republican insiders say that the likelihood that Trump becomes their party’s nominee is higher today than it was a month ago, and 79 percent of Democrats said the same. That’s according to the POLITICO Caucus, our weekly bipartisan survey of the top strategists, operatives and activists in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

“I can't even describe the lunacy of him as our nominee. But reason has not applied to date in this race and my hopes are fleeting that it will ever surface,” lamented an Iowa Republican, who like all participants was granted anonymity in order to speak freely.

“Predictions of his demise keep not coming true,” added a New Hampshire Republican.

Asserted a South Carolina Republican, “Donald Trump being the GOP nominee is now within the realm of possibility.”

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.